


Forts and Their Foreign Values

by ImmortalError



Category: The Man in the High Castle (TV)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Existential Crisis, Kinda, Light Angst, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Robert and his damn rolled sleeves, Smile, Smoking, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-05
Updated: 2018-06-05
Packaged: 2019-05-18 13:35:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14853762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImmortalError/pseuds/ImmortalError
Summary: Ed isn't feeling like himself. He tries to find the hope he once told Juliana she found.





	Forts and Their Foreign Values

Edward McCarthy hadn't felt good in a long time. ‘Good’ meaning any emotion even the slightest bit better than the much below-average that had become Ed’s simple day-to-day. He'd lost any and every spec of happiness that had once called his heart home. Instead it was like the ocean in the darkest of nights; rolling waves of darkness, tossing and turning and changing forms with every new disaster that struck. The waves kept getting rougher, a tsunami was building.

He hadn't felt like himself since a time so long past he couldn't place a number on it. He was no longer Edward McCarthy but, instead, an empty shadow of what he once was. He had always been small, but he had been getting thinner as the days dragged by. He found it strange; to resemble that which he felt. Barely a person, nearly a skeleton yet somehow whole, falling apart at the seams. The rings around his eyes might as well have had been tattoos, they stuck there in constant reminder that nights were something to fear. That sleep was a foreign state and that nightmares had slipped the barrier into reality. Wounds, scars and bruises littered his pale skin, but he was too tired to care about them.

He took a deep breath, feeling the smoke drift around his nose and calm him. Deep breaths hurt for him, they reminded him too much of gasping. The memories of mustard gas would flood back to him and take his breath from him once more. Hard to breath when it feel although your throat blister and lungs shriveling. The embers were the brightest light in the dimly lit room. It was silent, excluding the sounds of his own breaths and distant screaming of what he could only imagine was of a criminal cause.  
"Without me? Wow. I'm offended." He would have jumped had he have been fully awake to the world. Robert's voice flooded his ears, surprising him. But he did not look away from the smoke nor the cuts that wound their way through his fingers.   
"Sorry." He glanced up and back at Robert, trying to hide his crisis. But there was no smart-ass reply. Instead, a brief few moments of hesitation followed by a thump on the couch. Robert had sat down beside him, his eyes narrowed at Ed's.   
"Are you okay?" He drawled, hinting at confusion.   
"Yeah, fine." He half smiled, too tired to raise the other half.   
"Fine my ass, you've taken one of my cigarettes without my permission. Oh wait, no, lack of common courtesy has always been a strong suit of yours." Robert’s smirk was forced. So forced that it fell short. Giving up the act, Ed's eyes went dark. His eyes lost their confidence and reasoning, instead being replaced with something Robert didn't want to know well. Someone Robert didn’t want to know.

"Come on Ed..." he pleaded, "talk to me."

Ed turned his head towards Robert, analysing every millimeter of his face. The way the moon light outlined his most defined features. The white shirt which seemed to glow in the dark accompanied with a tie securely wrapped around the collar. A part of Ed envied the value Robert put on things that he shrugged past. Ed envied that Robert could take pride in his appearance even in the roughest of situations. The sweaters decorated in tears didn’t complete to Robert’s suit shirts with sleeves rolled to the elbows. Ed envied the value Robert placed on his antiques, it was a drive other than survival. Ed had become acquainted with wanting to survive for so long that everything else seemed a blur to him. Values and meanings were all contaminated by the fog of war. The destruction and chaos of cross fire. Ed knew he wanted to live, but he didn’t know much more past that.

“I’m struggling to remember what I value.” Ed found an excuse not to look Robert in the eyes from the smoke. Another puff, another reason to not have to face reality.  
“I value my life. I don’t value much more than that. There’s not much left to fight for.” Hope was gone. Ed wanted to shrink into the couch, bury himself among the material. He wanted to disappear with each passing moment of silence.

“You value your forts.”

Walls, Ed thought, were not strong. He’d never liked when people referenced mental and emotional walls as strong. Walls were frail. At least the ones he’d always known were frail. Bricks held together in uneven slabs. Wood ready to be turned to ash in a mere moment. Paint that simply would not stick. Wallpaper tearing at the edges, giving in to larger rips. Walls could be torn down; at the hands of either machine or man. He’d seen it too many times.

Forts, however, seemed much more practical. Forts were made of walls, enough of them to be reliable. The jokes Ed made and the smiles he wore were all fragments of his forts. They protected him from reality. If he could laugh, then there was something to laugh about. A light of some sort. Lately, the practicality of them had lessened. He found himself a stranger to his own self, now that there wasn’t much to laugh at. “My forts have crumbled.” Another puff, another reason to not meet Robert’s eyes.Ed’s purpose had crumbled with them.

Ed had once told Juliana that she had found a little hope, just enough to keep on going. Now it was he that couldn't find that hope. A part of Ed knew that one of his biggest drives had always been Frank. However, lately Frank’s entire person was becoming a vague blur, Ed felt as though he was misplacing pieces of Frank. He was misplacing pieces of the man who’d always been there for him, who’d helped made him whole. Funny that the word always had lost his meaning. Always there for him. Only that was becoming foreign too. As pieces of Frank were disappearing, Ed realised, pieces of Robert were becoming clearer.

Robert with his worried eyes and his goddamn rolled sleeves. Ed’s eyes drifted to Robert, who’d been distracted by a piece of lone fluff on his sleeve. Brushing it away, he looked back up to Ed. He met Robert’s eyes, and, for the first time, he realised that Robert couldn’t read them all the way through. They would’ve seemed hazed and distant. Robert was wondering what he was thinking. Ed puffed smoke, handing it over to Robert, and at the graze of fingertips Ed spoke.

“I think I value you.”

The words left Ed’s mouth with mere permission and even less intent. Ed watched as Robert froze, arm lingering in the air as he took the smoke. He blinked briefly, as if it would help clear the meaning. As the cigarette left Ed’s hand, Robert flashed a smile. One that wasn’t forced, one that was just as unintentional as the words leaving Ed’s mouth. But Ed had seen something in the smile he hadn’t expected. The light he was looking for. Ed realised he valued smiles.

Robert’s was a smile worth fighting for.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this a while back, it's not exactly fantastic.


End file.
